


Man

by StolenVampires



Series: Masks [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: A year later and it is done, I mean ending, M/M, THE FINAL PAM - Freeform, angst recovery, relationship recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 10:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11712105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StolenVampires/pseuds/StolenVampires
Summary: The combined ending of my main fic, Masks. Can be read as stand alone.Hanzo and McCree survive their encounter with death but they relationship they could have had is in ruins. This is what death, and life, might bring when given a chance.





	Man

The wind was cold.

But at the same time as he felt the flutter of feather brush the tips of his fingers, it was also absently cold. A state of being that cold should be, it was supposed to be felt, known, but it was absent. Void in that particular moment and the space around one’s self. Hanzo felt his warm breath rise around his face in a mist, clouding his vision as black swirled above red and orange and gold.   
The sun glittered out of a single eye that so often he’d marred with sadness and pain. An eye that had brought forth so many emotions Hanzo had feared he would drown in them all. Lost to feeling.  
Too much.

Without the cold, with the sun burning it it’s righteousness, the echo of thunder and the howl of beasts in the wind, the mist of his breath rising over his face, Hanzo felt too much.

Then, like lightning, he felt nothing at all.

 

Later, when Angela was treating his hands for frost nip, (not bite, you are very lucky Mr. Shimada, any later and the nerve damage would have begun she’d said to him, genuine concern lacing her tone.), the Dragon would recall how the shadow had wrapped around itself and called out for their Dio, for absolution. A blossom of red and black clouding the sky until a grey and brown husk fell into the snow. Still, and motionless.  
Death had fallen.  
It did not rise to greet him like Hanzo thought it should have.

 

For a while, they did not speak.  
The Fox mourned for a mentor, a friend that the Dragon never knew. Others also mourned, and the dragon felt nothing for it. Death had fallen. A owl mask in the snow, it was laid over green grass when the man who was once a king of shadows was interned. He did not see the grave of death. For why should he need to see validation of what was inevitable? Death was death. Absolute. It could never hold itself in the waking world long. Just like the spirits in his soul, death came, served it’s purpose, and then left, leaving behind only devastation in it’s wake.

The Dragon felt nothing, not since he’d seen the fires of the sun in the eye of the Fox.

 

Months past, there were more missions, more deaths. Yet the Fox was quick and nimble as ever, it did not hunt death anymore.  
Neither did the Dragon.

 

It was strange, how nearly a year later, the words came.   
“Thank you.” The Dragon let them tumble from his lips as they sat alone in a bar off of Route 66 in the middle of the continental US.   
“You saved me then.” He continued, looking across the table at the Fox, who was quiet, attentive and as he’d been for the last year, respectful of the Dragon.  
“I-“ He hesitated, as if he feared the wrong words would send the Dragon from him again, if for the wrong reasons.  
“You mean, that one time yeah?” The Dragon’s nod was slow, and an understanding passed between them. They had saved one another since then, but none had ever come so close. None had ever the shadow of death so viscerally after that day. But it was not the day of sun in the Fox’s eye. Not the day an owl fell from the heavens, the day a Dragon understood what it had lost.  
“I meant for what you have done for me in these past years McCree.” The swallow in the Fox’s neck was visible, and it stirred something warm and hot in the chest of the Dragon.  
“I never thanked you for the kindness you showed me, even if I rejected it.” They sat there, cups of cheap coffee steaming, both bitter and black. The Fox’s plate clean of food. Scrambled eggs on the Dragon’s plate, untouched.

Slowly, a small flicker of warmth bloomed in the eyes of the Fox, lips tugged up and that feeling in the Dragon’s chest deepened.   
“You don’t have to thank me for that.” He said, southern twang sounding like it had years ago. Musical and different and beautiful.   
“We all deserve a ‘lil bit a kindness. But-“ He reached over, fork extended. “I’d mighty take your eggs as a form a thanks ifin you don’t mind.”

For the first time in a long time, the Dragon laughed.

 

They go out on more missions together now. The Fox smiles and a little bit of the sunlight shines behind him each time. The warmth in the Dragon’s chest blooms.   
Claws dig into his bones, muscle and soul.  
He is not so afraid anymore.

 

They spend Christmas at the base. Hanzo gets a bottle of whiskey. McCree a bottle of Sake. They stand under the mistletoe.  
They just smile and walk away.

 

Summer comes, McCree invites the Dragon to go with him to Santa Fe. To help him end Deadlock once and for all.   
The Dragon rumbles inside of Hanzo. They say yes.

 

Christmas again. Hanzo gets an ugly sweater with Pachimari on it. McCree a silk Yukata, as he’d been jealous on their last mission to Japan with a lack of one. The Fox teases he will have to get the Dragon something better. The Dragon smiles to himself, his eyes grazing over the sprig of green mounted over the doorway.  
He thinks of what might have been and no longer feels regret. 

 

Spring. The Dragon takes the Fox to the shrine of his youth. There, he sees the Fox. He shines in the sunlight, smile wide and voice loud and musical in it’s coarse timber. He hold’s Hanzo’s hand and the skin is soft yet also calloused. Firm and soft. A contradiction and yet a welcomed one. Together, they make wishes, asking for blessings.

Hanzo makes his wish.  
Two days later, his wish is granted.

He tastes of honey and fire, and it is so much better than tobacco and whiskey. He feels like he is drowning and he cannot care. He lets it wash over him.   
He is lost in a tidal wave of feeling, and he is not afraid.

 

The years pass on, and one day, it occurs to the Dragon that the Fox has never left him. The Fox has tricked him a final time, and it was not even the Fox to do it.  
The Dragon has long since become a man. Mortal, he has walked by the Fox for so long, he was blind to what was next to him. Holding him gently at night and whispering sweet songs to him on long nights, to who was the one that now looks at him as if _he_ is the sun. 

The Kitsune traded away it’s tails, it’s magic, it’s powers to become a fox.  
The Fox has traded it’s skin to become a man.  
The Man has traded his heart for another’s.

Hanzo smiles and slips the golden ring onto his hand.

A final trick, a final trap. The last remnants of the Dragon fade, and in it’s place stands a man, thunder and lighting and power in his veins, in his soul. 

He stands next to Jesse McCree, and smiling whispers only loud enough so he may hear what he has become.  
“Anata.”

**Author's Note:**

> A year later, and the promised combined ending. Thank you all for bearing with me and I hope this ending fills you with as much feelings of good as it does me.


End file.
